brilla el sol, y el corazon
by Agent of the Apothecary
Summary: AU / "If I write to you," he says in a quiet voice, between them and no one else, so quiet the wind could take the words away and never return them, "will you read my letters?"


Story: brilla el sol, y el corazon

Summary: AU / "If I write to you," he says in a quiet voice, between them and no one else, so quiet the wind could take the words away and never return them, "will you read my letters?"

Notes: This is incredibly insipid, I know it and my computer knows it which is why it is judging me, and I just finished series one and it was so—so—well, I spent the whole time yelling at my laptop, "ROBIN, WHY ARE YOU SUCH AN EMOTIONALLY-CRIPPLED _MORON_," and then I wrote this about him, well, not being one.

If I'd been a better writer, this could've been something very cool about idols and putting people on pedestals and how dangerous a practice it is, but mostly I just wrote about sex in large bodies of water and also I guess Ivanhoe shows up? Whooo…

* * *

><p>"Robin," she says, standing in the door of the house, her dress and hair framed by the darkness of the interior. "Stay. Please."<p>

"I have no choice," he reminds her. He is twisted in his saddle, the horse itching beneath him, part of him urging _leave before she cries again_. "I've been called by the king."

"If we get married, he won't make you go. He isn't making Gareth of York leave before he has a son." She is not offering a compromise so much as bribe—it is painful, how quickly his heart stalls at her words, the rush of everything they hint to, marriage and Marian's dark hair spread against the cream of his pillows and a baby, between them. He wants adventure and glory and honor, but—he also wants Marian.

"I've given him my word," he finally says, hoping that she can see how tired he is, of thinking about this, how much he wishes there were a solution that could reconcile his duty to his king and his duty to Marian, to love her and keep her safe. The words are hard to force out of his mouth, and he thinks about leaving, just with that—_he cannot bear to see her cry again_—but he dismounts and throws the reins to a stable lad looking intrigued and he runs up the steps of the house, quickly, two at a time, and pulls her into his arms. "Please," he whispers into her hair, "wait for me, please, Marian. I shouldn't tell you to, you have every right to break off our engagement—but wait. Please."

He doesn't think he's said 'please' this many times in his entire previous twenty years, definitely not to Marian, but her tears have stripped away most of his pride, rendered him mewling like a little girl, and he cannot prevent himself from cradling the back of her head in his hands and tilting her face up towards his. The sunlight bends around her nose and the softness of her cheeks. "_Marian_."

Her eyes lock with his for three very long seconds, and then they skitter off course, over his right shoulder. "Don't be a fool," she finally says. "I won't wait for you. If you die, I will marry immediately. I'll marry Richard of Pemberton, I swear it."

"Richard of Pemberton," says Robin, running a thumb along her cheekbone, under the lower curve of her eye, "is a _moron_."

"He's a _rich_ moron," she snaps, "and he's kind and—"

"—insipid and will let you be a tyrant, is what," finishes Robin. What he wants to do, more than anything, is smile, because she will wait, she has said it in her anger at the thought of his death and her threats of marrying someone he finds ridiculous and asinine and the dashed line of tears she is holding back—but he cannot smile. He tries for a smirk, at least, and is moderately successful. "I'm going to come back and marry you to save him and Pemberton from your merciless rule."

"That's what _you_ think," she says, aiming for murderous and failing while still in tremulous territory. "Maybe I will join a convent," she continues. The bones of her face feel light under Robin's hands, but he knows their strength—he hit her in the face, once, mostly accidentally, when she was seven, and her nose ended up cracking two of his knuckles and almost breaking his hand and emerging unscathed itself.

"You would look hideous in a habit," he says. "Like a whale." She still hasn't fully recovered her dignity from her chubby phase a few years previous, and she shows her disapproval in how firmly she then proceeds to punch him in the arm. "A lovely whale," he says, turning them a little so more of her face is in the light, so he can remember every facet of her features, the little beads of summer sweat along her hairline, the freckles clustered under her left eye. "A whale I would willingly take to wife provided she wasn't a nun. Even then. I might kidnap you."

"Blasphemy, from a prospective Crusader?" she says, raising an eyebrow. She is trying so hard to force her anger to the surface; he can see her wrapping it around her love and her worry and pushing them deeper inside of herself, away from the sunlight. "I'll report you."

"To who?" he points out, pulling free her hairpins and letting the warm, slick length of her hair coil around his hand. "I swear it, Marian. I will return. I will marry you. I don't care if you're a nun or a hag or a bloody Saxon priestess, I will throw you over my shoulder, and I will take you back to Locksley with me."

"I don't know how you've gone through the last twenty years thinking this sort of barbarism is a attractive," she sniffs. "Because—here's a hint—_it's not_."

He is distracted from immediately replying by rubbing strands of her hair between his fingers, letting it catch on the callouses he has from archery and sparring and hard riding. Like everything involving Marian, it is soft and tricky and slick, running out of his hands and leaving them empty. He winds the whole lot of it around his hand, twice, and holds firm. He doesn't really know what he is clinging to—he has to leave, he probably should've two hours ago, he's going to be late for dinner and his mother will be crying—but the weight is comforting.

"You know you love it," he finally says, absently, too late. His tone is thoughtful, not teasing, and her eyes snap from where they have been roving to his. He can see what she is thinking, and he replies _yes, yes, I will do this to make sure you stay mine_ in how he tugs on her hair, gentler than when they were children but still firm enough to hold he steady as he kisses her, in front of three enraptured stable boys and probably her father from an upstairs window and Much, who is grumbling over by the road.

She squeaks, indignantly, and for a single second she raises her hand threateningly, but he releases her hair to frame both sides of her face and he thinks, _I love you, please, Marian_ as he presses deeper—and she instead lets her hand rest, so lightly it might not be true, on the curve of his neck where the collar of his tunic has slipped.

"If I write to you," he says in a quiet voice, between them and no one else, so quiet the wind could take the words away and never return them, "will you read my letters?"

Her eyes are closed, and her mouth barely moves as she says—whispers—breathes, really, so he can only tell the words are hers by the way her lips slip open and shut, "Yes. But I won't reply."

"I don't need one," he says. He means _yet_, but small victories with Marian are always hard-won and treasured, and never to be abused.

* * *

><p>His fourth month with the king's guard, he falls in with an incredibly large Saxon who apparently left his family with heavy disapproval on his shoulders to join the king in the east. <em>He looks like if a mountain and the sun had a child—and he's an absolute beast on the field; what he lacks in subtlety he makes up for in being the size of a house<em>, Robin writes to Marian at the end of the month, like he does at the end of every month. _I'm thinking about inviting him back to Locksley when we're done; his father disowned him before he joined the Crusades, and he's a good man to have at your back_.

"Writing poetry _again_, Locksley?" someone says from across the tent, and Robin immediately responds with a rude gesture. There are a few gurgles of laughter, and the other men settle into the ribbing that has already gotten very, very old.

"If she's said yes, then the troublesome part is over!" grins Harold from across the fire, where he is smoothly wetting his blade. "All you've got to do now is not let yourself get gutted by some Saracen dog."

There is a small thud as Ivanhoe settles himself next to Robin, folding legs like tree trunks into a comfortable seating position. "What you know about women, Harold," he says, "wouldn't fill a witch's tit." Robin grins into his parchment, and keeps writing. "The ones worth keeping deserve more than a ring and a few years of silence."

This is something Robin has refrained from mentioning in his letters. Marian is smart, she knew when he left this wasn't going to be a boy's jaunt for a few months across the island, but he doesn't want to think about the next three or four or five years, spending them as the memory of the patterns of her freckles fade and the blood dries stiffly into his clothes.

Almost to test himself, he dots a few daubs of ink across the bottom of the page. Three under her left eye—twelve on the bridge of her nose—two large, asymmetrical by the corner of her right eye. He feels like a girl.

"Spoken like a man with experience," Robin finally says to him, when the ink has dried on _Give your father my regards, Robin_ and attention in the tent has wandered. "You haven't spoken of anyone, Ivanhoe."

"I suspect I haven't got anyone, any more," grunts Ivanhoe. When he works his weapons, he does so carefully, pressing against the blade with giant, hard-skinned fingers, his eyes narrowed under a heavy blond brow. "My father would see her married elsewhere."

"Sounds familiar," says Robin. "But the great Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, discouraged by something as paltry as _disagreement_? You could take on Saladin's horse in hand-to-hand and come out unscathed."

"My father is not Saladin's horse," says Ivanhoe, a very brief grin appearing under his beard. "For one thing, he is a great deal larger."

They sit in silence for a little while, broken up by Much appearing to gather Robin's spare tunic for washing and his usual grumbles about the lack of food, privacy, and respect for one's betters to be found in a camp, and eventually Robin and Ivanhoe are appointed with a handful of others for the first watch, and they sit themselves outside the king's tent.

"What's her name?" he asks Ivanhoe, because he is twenty-one and curious and has a problem shutting up about things.

Looking only slightly less intimidating than a bear, Ivanhoe gives Robin a frustrated look. "She's not to be my wife, Locksley."

"Well, with that attitude she certainly isn't," agrees Robin pleasantly. "Is she some Saxon beauty, golden-haired and flame-touched and such?"

"You're worse than that Welsh idiot," says Ivanhoe; and then under his breath, "_flame-touched_, by the teat of the Virgin." Robin is still raising a politely inquiring eyebrow, so Ivanhoe finally grumbles, "Rowena."

"Rowena." Robin tries out the Saxon name—an unfamiliar one, rounder than the ones he's used to, and still pleasant. "Is she likely to fight for you, then? Not listen to your father?"

"Ha!" says Ivanhoe. "What sort of woman have you got at home, Locksley, a lion? _Not listen to my father_?" This is clearly a yes.

"Then there is still hope," says Robin, clapping Ivanhoe on the shoulder. "You should write to her. Women apparently love that sort of thing."

* * *

><p>Marian breaks her promise to Robin only once.<p>

_Robin,_

_Your mother passed for this earth early this morning. She's been sick since last winter, the cold's chill, and she slipped and cracked her hip a month ago. The bed rest wasn't enough to keep out the fever, although we did everything we could, including sending for a physician from Nottingham. He bled her, but it wasn't enough to calm the fire._

_She asked me to tell you that she loves you, and understands why you had to answer the king's summons. We are burying her after the funeral behind the chapel in Locksley Manor, by your father. Since you are gone and can hardly be expected to do it yourself, I will leave the offerings on her grave. _

_I think she will be very happy to be with your father again; she has missed him these past two years, with you gone, and I think she has been lonely. She was always very appreciative of your letters, for all that you apparently did not gift her with the same egregious generosity and verbosity as you have me._

_Do not die; I have learned I abhor the mourning dress. Give Much my well-wishes._

_Marian_

* * *

><p>It should make him many things, Marian's letter—frustrated, tired, angered, saddened—and it does the latter quite well, but mostly what it does is make him laugh, which was probably her intention, and also vow to write her even longer letters in the future, which probably was not.<p>

* * *

><p>The two non-English men who serve on the guard—that would be Ivanhoe, last in the line of the old Saxon kings, and Llewellyn of Something Incredibly Unpronounceable, a Welsh princeling who talks like a bard (and not a good one at that)—are much more understanding of Robin's more girlish tendencies (the writing to Marian and the reading of the Quran, both of which reach a frenzied pitch the longer the siege lasts) than the English ones.<p>

_I can't understand all of this_, Robin writes to Marian for May's letter, _or even, indeed, much of it. The Quran seeks to teach many ideas similar to those we hear in the chapel at home. I have discovered in my time here that the Saracens do not wish to destroy the holy land, but to preserve it, for their own strange faith, and they see _us_ as the destroyers. They are devout men, as are the men who serve with me on the king's guard. It seems impossible that all of us are right; and yet, I cannot see how we are wrong_.

Robin has no compunction about sending Marian his confusions; he knows she has no illusions about his faith, and he has very few about hers. He writes to her so frequently, thinks of her so often, that there are times he has trouble remembering that Marian is not actually with him, in a dirty tent outside a frustrated Acre bristling with Saracen indignation.

What he does not tell Marian is the number of men he kills. He does not tell her about his bow, finely curved into the Saracen arch, the feel of its hard circle in his arms. All the memories of Locksley and Knighton—teaching Marian to shoot, picking acorns off of trees, hunting game with other nobles (with permission) or Much (without) in the king's forest—are blurred out by his eyes narrowing on slits between helmet and chest guards, the shocked squawk that emerges from the first man he shoots through the eye, the smell of his arrows when he collects them after battle.

He does not tell Marian about the night he gets very, very drunk and tells Ivanhoe and the king (_the king_—Marian is right, he is a _moron_) about his worries that Marian will have gone off and married stupid Richard of Pemberton before he gets home, just to be contrary. The king and Ivanhoe, who is his elder by five years, both treat him like a green lad just ripe in life for two weeks afterwards before he gets fed up and shoots four Saracen swordsmen at once, with a cockily drawn eyebrow that he almost loses along with the rest of his head because of his posturing.

Most of his confusion, his doubts, his concerns, go into Marian's letters. What he fears is more distance between them; the years apart are hard enough, he cannot imagine going home to find that war has made a deep river he cannot bridge. He will not share death with Marian, but he will share everything else. He has no experience doing any differently; he and Marian have always shared everything.

* * *

><p>"All you talk about," Ivanhoe remarks one evening, when they are gnawing on some half-molded bread during third watch and trying not to think too hard about where it came from, "is the Quran and your betrothed. You are a very boring companion, Locksley."<p>

"You don't talk at all," Robin points out. "In fact, you'd probably be more interesting if you blathered about this Rowena a bit more. Are you concerned that she'll be married to Lord Aethelgit by the time you get back?"

"Aethelstane," says Ivanhoe, clearly loath to correct him. "I did that thing you told me to do, write her a letter." A little shocked and moderately pleased, Robin settles back on his heels.

"Well, what'd she say?"

"My _father_ sent me back the ashes," says Ivanhoe. It is either him or his Saxon blood that enables him to say this coolly, maybe even with a small flash of humor. "I think my advances are still unwelcome."

"Her guardian opposing you—that's a good start," pipes up Llewellyn from where he is sitting on the other side of the entrance to the king's tent. "Women always like that spot of tension; makes them feel like they're involved in something romantic and dangerous."

"Oh god," says Robin under his breath, because he knows where this is going. Sure enough, Llewellyn picks up his harp and quickly strings up the ballad tuning, at which point he begins on a ridiculous and long-winded description of the Valiant King Maelwhatsis, who is attempting to liberate his lands (a place with twelve vowels and no consonants) and his lady-love, the Lady Enid, from some equally poorly-named villainous lord.

"If he goes on all night, I'm stringing you up by your toes," threatens Ivanhoe, pointing at Robin with his moldy bread. "With those damn harp strings, I swear it."

Llewellyn warbles into the twelfth stanza strongly, and Robin asks Much to _please_, for the love of all that is good and English, find alcohol somewhere in camp strong enough to knock out a Welsh lordling. Much makes a face. "You think if I could find alcohol I wouldn't have done it already?" he asks shrilly, and then Llewellyn starts in on a lengthy list of Lady Enid's virtues, and Much immediately turns on his heels and goes to find the French, who _always_ have alcohol.

* * *

><p>Robin dreams about Marian; such dreams are not uncommon amongst the men in the guard. Sometimes he will hear Ivanhoe grunt that liquid Saxon name in his sleep, sad and long, and it twists his stomach to think that he might sound like that.<p>

"Did I say anything?" he asks Much one morning, after a particularly dreadful nightmare.

"No," says Much, not looking up from where he is poking something with a spoon over the fire. "If by 'anything' you mean _something other than Lady Marian's name_."

"Sorry," says Robin. He would be embarrassed, but this is Much. Much is the one, in fact, who managed to coerce the king's courier into taking Robin's twelve envelopes back to Nottinghamshire once a year, so he has no illusions about how much of a sop Robin becomes when Marian is involved.

"I almost wouldn't mind if you would stop screaming," continues Much. "You've been saying her name in your sleep since you were eighteen, so that isn't much new, but the shrieking is really very off-putting."

"Oh yes, I will be sure to kill fewer Saracen men in the future, to ensure you sleep better," says Robin, tiredly aiming for amused sarcasm and probably failing. Much, being a good man, doesn't take offense.

"If you kill fewer Saracens, you wouldn't be doing your duty for the king," says Much as he hands over a bowl of breakfast. Robin quickly begins to eat it and doesn't ask questions about what it is. He's given up on the letter writing, at least until the siege is over, because he's run out of ink and he and Much need food more than he needs to whine to Marian about his attacks of conscience.

"Fair enough," agrees Robin quietly, and then he puts his whole attention into not choking on his breakfast.

The night after—and the night after that—he dreams of Marian again, but more quietly, the sorts of dreams he began to have at eighteen, the summer Marian turned fifteen and shed some of her chubbiness to gain sleek, round edges.

_I love you_, she says to him in his dreams, and her arms are long and white and smooth as they wrap around his neck, pull him down into a nest of reeds by Locksley Pond. When he kisses her neck, in his dreams, she laughs breathlessly and rolls him over and they fall with a hard splash into the pond, where they kiss as they sink lazily to the bottom. The fish swimming by brush against their legs where they are tangled together, and Marian's hair streams around her head like a thick cloud, moving in darting locks like something alive. When he moves into her, against her, she throws back her head and plants her heels into the sand on the bottom of the pond. The sand scrubs the skin on Robin's knees and palms as the fabric of her dress slips with the current over her head and away from them.

_I love you_, she says to him, and she cries his name into the water, which snatches the sound away like the wind, and he tilts her hips, changes the angle, and tries again, begs her, _say my name, Marian_, but all he can feel is the thick heaviness of the pond water against his ears, turning her white skin blue and green and dappled with light. When she finally does come, all the water roils around them, as if it is boiling, and it evaporates away, leaving them sandy and dry and sticky, locked together against the sandy basin of Locksley Pond as the fish swim in the air around them.

Deciding that he will go crazy if this continues, Robin trades ten hand-whittled arrows—he is acknowledged, hands down, as the best arrow-maker in the camp—for a bottle of ink and a bag of onions for Much and he writes to Marian, crossed-legged in the early morning light, about his second reading of the Quran and the two new members of the king's guard who are about twelve and terrible archers and he never once mentions the saltiness of her skin in his dreams or that he thinks he is going crazy with missing her.

_It has been over four years_, he scribbles, fighting with the final dregs of ink, _since I've seen your face. You haven't sent any of my letters back, so I hope this means you haven't married that son of a goat Richard of Pemberton or some other slavering imbecile. I hope you aren't burning them, considering what I had to trade to get all that ink. Much complained for days about how much bread I was writing away to you, but if Much stopped complaining about food I imagine—well, to be honest, I can't imagine it at all._

He dribbles water down the sides of the bottle and finishes, in ink almost too translucent to read, _Give your cook a kiss for me, I'm sure she misses me, Robin_, and then in water he writes _I LOVE YOU _across the bottom of the page. He sprinkles drying sand across it and watches the words disappear, soak into the paper, and then he folds up the letter and puts it with the four others he has written this year, and he tells Much to give them to the king's courier—he can't waste any more of his traded arrows on ink.

* * *

><p>That night, Robin awakes to a cluster of Saracen fighters pushing their way towards the king's tent. Ivanhoe, half-dressed and wild-looking in the flicking light of the fire, actually punches one of them hard enough that his neck breaks with a high, wet noise. Robin kills four of them with arrows, two with his Saracen blade, and then he almost dies when their leader (at least, he thinks it's their leader, judging by the body language) tries to shish kebab him with a sword.<p>

That is what Robin thinks about, after he has fought his way to the king's side and defended his lord and then collapsed to promptly bleed over the royal bedding—_Much loves shish kebabs, he was going to make them for Marian_.

"Yes, Locksley," says the king, sounding amused. "Your man has a talented hand with alternative cuisine. Now shut up, we require our physician to examine you."

* * *

><p>Robin remembers very little from his feverish weeks, but Ivanhoe assures him when he wakes that he did many embarrassing things, including calling for his betrothed and moaning a lot. "Glad you're lucid," says the Saxon cheerfully, looking like his head is bumping the sky from where Robin is curled up in a weak lump of limbs. "I was getting tired of all that whining from your manservant."<p>

"I was not _whining_," hisses Much. "—my lord," he adds, a few long seconds later.

"I've orders from the king," says Ivanhoe. "You're to go back to England to recover, and to marry that girl you're always going on about, and I'm to make sure the king's best archer doesn't die falling out of a window with a rose between his teeth or whatever it is a Englishman does when he's a fool in love."

"If the fool is Robin," says Much tartly, "he calls his beloved a whale and then almost breaks her nose."

As Robin's whole face turns red and he shouts at Much, "_I was ten years old!_" Ivanhoe laughs and laughs and laughs and the ground underneath him shakes.

"You Normans," he says, with a wide white grin, "are a stupid lot. Here I was, taking romantic advice from someone who can't even manage to court a lady properly."

"Oh, shut up," snaps Robin, and then he is laughing, too, and he is light-headed, probably from the blood loss and the fever and the weakness in his limbs but also.

_Marian_.

* * *

><p>The first thing Robin does when they set foot on English soil is turn to Ivanhoe and say, "Well, where is this Rotherwood, then?"<p>

"What," says Ivanhoe.

"Rotherwood," repeats Robin, slowly enunciating the syllables. "Unless there's some useless Saxon pronunciation for it—that's where your father is, isn't it? And the lovely Lady Rowena?"

"My orders," says Ivanhoe, "are to get you married by the end of the month."

Robin grins and waves his hand, fighting down every instinct in his body that is screaming for him to find a damn horse and get to Nottinghamshire as quickly as humanly possible. "I'm not going to force you to accompany me without finding out the fate of Lady Rowena and Lord Aethelgit, Ivanhoe."

"It's in Staffordshire," Ivanhoe finally says when it is apparent that Robin is not going to suddenly gather his wits and high-tail it back to Nottinghamshire. "We should pass through Nottinghamshire on our way there—and you'd be remiss not to check in our your betrothed."

"Yes, fine," says Robin, and Much, who has spent the last two or three minutes on his knees, kissing some blades of grass, creaks to his feet and sighs, a little wearily.

"There is going to be more walking, isn't there?" he says, and without waiting for an answer he turns in a half-circle and begins to walk away from the beach. "How about a jaunty tune while we travel?" he calls over his shoulder. "Llewellyn taught me so many, I'm sure you haven't heard all of them. _And on the noon by mistress soon—_"

"In the name of all that is bloody holy," groans Ivanhoe, and he catches up to Much in two steps to snag him around the neck and cut off the wailing. "My friend, I would like to tell you a story. It begins in my father's home, and chronicles the very short life of the only bard to have ever crossed his doorstep. You'll like it, there's a lot of blood."

* * *

><p>Robin doesn't even stop in Locksley. He gives Much and Ivanhoe a gentle swatting down the road and the second they are around the corner, takes off in a dead run. He makes it to Knighton in a blur, and he takes the back entrance because he doesn't want to have to deal with anyone in the village. "Master Robin!" half-shrieks the cook, almost planting her elbow in a bubbling pot of something over the kitchen fire.<p>

"Where is she?" he asks.

"The heathens have left you with _no manners_," she hisses.

"Not true!" says Robin cheerfully, "I washed and shaved this morning, you know. Just to be prepared."

"Where, in a mud puddle?" snaps the cook, who has never liked Robin.

"It was a bit more glorified than that," says Robin, by which he means a slightly larger and less-brown mud puddle than normally found on the road. He hasn't given a thought to his appearance before now, but Marian's never cared about how smelly he is, and he hasn't seen her for five years and a little stubble and wear on his tunic isn't going to keep him from slipping his engagement ring off of the cord around her neck and onto her finger as soon as physically possible. "Where is she?"

"In the main room, with her embroidery," sighs the cook. "You'd best be going along then, I don't want you in here for too long, you'll put salt in my sugar tins again."

"I was _twelve_," says Robin, and stoops to give her a kiss on the cheek. "You'll always be my favorite, Sour Sally."

She gasps and swats at him with a towel as he dances away to the door to the rest of the house. "Off with you then, Master Robin!"

He does as he's told, slipping through the door and letting it fall shut silently behind him. He wants a second to catch himself, to set himself to rights. There is a trembling inside his chest that makes his feet stumble on the smooth wooden floorboards, and he shakes his head, thinks, _This is the man who saved the life of the king? Get a _hold_ on yourself, man_, and he peeks around the staircase.

Marian is sitting by the fire, embroidering.

For a very thin, long second, all that Robin can see is the whiteness in her fingers, the tapered ends that he has dreamed about for five years dancing across his chest and his face and the back of his neck, as they slip a needle quickly back and forth, spilling bright green across the linen of what looks like a very large tablecloth.

She is thinner, taller, and some of the roundness has left her cheeks and settled elsewhere, into the curve of her shoulders and the strength that her upper arms betray. Her hair is shorter, oddly enough, only long enough to catch between her shoulder-blades, and it is curling against a pair of ribbons that are doing their job of holding it back very poorly.

She looks tired. She looks stronger. She looks, in many ways, exactly the same as she looked the morning that he threw propriety out the window and kissed her on the front steps of her house. From this angle, he cannot see the leather thong that she tied his engagement ring onto, five and a half years ago.

"Hello, Marian," he says. She doesn't look up, and it takes him a second to realize he has opened his mouth and said the words but his lungs don't appear to be working well enough to expel the necessary air. He takes a half step forward, and she looks up at the noise of the floor creaking.

"Marian," he croaks, and she drops her embroidery.

"What are you _doing here_," she says, and turns towards him and he can see quite clearly that she does not, in fact, have a leather thong—or a necklace of any kind—around her neck. "Are you _insane_?" she hisses.

"No," he says, and as he takes four of the seven steps necessary to reach her, he modifies, "maybe," and then he is kissing her, sliding her into his arms, feeling the shift as _then_ and _now_ find their matching points and come together seamlessly. He kisses her through her initial shock and then into her sudden ferociousness and their teeth click together twice as his fingers dig into her shoulders and then slide up her back into her hair and he flicks her hair ribbons free, crushing her curls against his fingers.

"_Marian_?"

It doesn't sound like the sheriff, for which Robin is grateful as he detaches himself from Marian's mouth and turns a little to face someone standing in the doorway—he's big, dressed in black, and looks like a gargoyle. He also looks murderous. "You _swine—_"

"Sir Guy!" Marian throws out her hands in a placating gesture. "Please, do not be alarmed. This is Robin, Earl of Huntingdon."

Robin still has one arm around Marian's waist, fingers fisting tightly the fabric of her gown. He doesn't like the look of the gargoyle, but that's probably because the man looks like he wants to skewer Robin and throw Marian over his shoulder. Robin is, generally, not partial to men who want to marry his betrothed, as Richard of Pemberton can attest. "Robin," continues Marian, turning a little in the circle of his arms, "this is Sir Guy of Gisborne, who was appointed by the sheriff to watch over Locksley during your absence."

Despite the fact that self-preservation tells him to open his mouth and say something witty to his soon-to-be-former replacement, Robin cannot form words at all, because he sees that Marian is not wearing his engagement ring around her neck because it is on her finger, the ring finger of her left hand, cared-for but worn from daily life. "Oh god, Marian," he says in a low voice, and then he recovers himself, badly. "Sir Guy. A pleasure. You'll excuse me if I'm a bit low on manners, I haven't seen my betrothed in five years." With obvious difficulty he tears his eyes away from her hands and blinks like an idiot at Gisborne.

"Locksley," says Gisborne. "Welcome back." He looks as though he would rather remove his teeth than continue to remain in their presence. He gives a short bow, a terse, "I will return when your father is home, my lady," and disappears out the door again. It swings shut as Robin presses against Marian for another kiss—and then another, because he can, and because she is wearing his ring, and because she _has_ been.

"Robin, stop," she says, "we need to talk."

"Yes," he agrees. "How do you feel about Saturday?"

"Saturday?" she says, stalling and shaking her head. "What?"

"For our wedding," he says. "I am, myself, partial to Friday because it is tomorrow, but Saturday would also be acceptable."

"Robin, are you _insane_?" she hisses. "Who am I kidding, of course you are—Robin, you are a _noble_, you cannot marry without the king's permission! And as the king, being many thousands of miles away, cannot be reached, you will have to ask Prince John."

"The king gave me very strict orders to come home and marry you," says Robin, and although Marian is ineffectually trying to slip out of his arms, he tightens the one around her waist and takes the opportunity to wrap the other around the back of her neck. "I am simply obeying my sovereign."

"Oh," says Marian. "Well. In that case." She looks confused, for a second, and Robin closes his eyes and presses a kiss to her forehead and holds her in his arms, waits for the panic to leave him, waits for the softness of her body and the lavender and pine smell of her hair to calm his heart.

"Wait, no, Robin, there is much I have to tell you. About my father—and Gisborne—and Prince John—and Locksley, oh, _Robin_, all of Nottinghamshire—"

"Yes," agrees Robin. "As you refused to write me a letter more than once over the past five years, I would agree that you have much to tell me." He doesn't open his eyes, simply presses his nose against her hair.

"You," says Marian in a slightly offended, muffled voice, "_left me_ for five years. It would've served you right if I married Sir Guy." Some of the tension leaks out of her body, and she folds against him, her left hand settling against his side.

"Sir Guy looks like a gargoyle," mutters Robin. After a brief pause he admits, "He looks slightly less insipid than Richard of Pemberton, though."

"Better taste in gifts," agrees Marian blandly, against his chest. "I have some very nice new scarves."

"I will smother you in scarves," says Robin. "And jewels. And swords—I've left it with Ivanhoe, back in Locksley, but I got you a sword, in Jerusalem. It's light, a bit short, perfect for your reach." As Marian hasn't said anything, he continues, in a slightly panicked voice, "And you'll get all my mother's jewelry, of course, you always liked her pearls—"

"Robin," interrupts Marian, pushing away from his chest with hands that are shaking a little. "Did you say you brought me back a _sword_?"

"Yes," says Robin. "Maybe. Do you still like swords?"

"Oh for the love of God," says Marian, and she throws her arms around his neck and jumps onto her toes to kiss him, "you are a moron but I love you, and yes, I will marry you on Saturday."

"I love you, too, you know," he admits, to her left ear, in a voice that sounds a little tinny as it rattles around inside his head.

Marian rolls her eyes. "Yes, I _know_. You wrote it on every letter you sent home." She rests her left hand on his cheek, where he can feel the warmth the metal of her ring has leached from her body. He can also feel callouses—sword callouses, from heavy fighting. Years of heavy fighting. His eyes probably betray his thoughts; she smirks and says, "You were gone for a long time. Things had to be done."

"Well, I'm home now," he says, and tries to think of a way to say _over my dead body will my wife be participating in heavy sword-fighting_ that won't result in Marian breaking his nose and their engagement. He can't think of one, and he also can't think of a good reason why she need stop, except the immediate need to ensure Marian is never hurt, ever; and, well, she's always been good at surviving scrapes on her own wits. "So, I guess we'll both have to get things done."

He loses points for the pause, but wins overall for the delivery. "Nicely diplomatic, Sir Robin," she says. "I'm shocked; did the Holy Land teach you how to make such compromises?"

"No," he says, "well, I suppose." He frowns at her. "Have you ever read the Quran, Marian?"

"Ah yes, there is a copy in one of Nottinghamshire's many libraries," she says. "No, Robin, I have not. But considering how long you've prattled on about it, I'm sure I've got whole sections of it memorized." She sounds peevish, but that means she's read all of his letters, and that is all Robin really cares about.

"I'll get you a copy," he promises, and they are still kissing when her father comes home from seeing to the villagers in Knighton and Ivanhoe and Much make it over from Locksley and they've brought with them three of the villagers from Locksley shouting about someone named _Vaisey_ who sounds like a real piece of work, and all Robin can think about is _Marian_.

The lady in question pinches him, and he jerks, frowning at her pettily. "What was _that_ for?" he hisses.

"Pay _attention_, you idiot," she hisses back. "This is important. We've important work to do here."

When Marian says his name, her breath hot and curled into his neck, it is all he can hear. Its meaning reverberates in his body, sinks with her teeth into his skin, and she signs every part of him with it—_with love, with love, with love, Marian_.


End file.
